The Future of History

April 11, 2011
The self-confessed reactionary Lukacs (Five Days in London) renders another lament for the passing of not just a historical generation, but an epoch. His perspective stretches back more than 400 years this time, to the Renaissance, with special emphasis on the 1750s, when a patrician western European bourgeoisie flourished. He mourns the departure of larger-than-life individuals, like Churchill and Napoleon, and historians like Acton and Burkhardt, who wrote about "politics and states and their leading persons." For him, the modern age, with its science and technology, is a pale replica, characterized by bureaucracy, anonymity, and mediocrity that pervade politics, education, even life itself. Lukacs memorializes the passing of the old order, and even questions the meaning of history and historians, the difference between history and fiction and how both relate to truth and justice, and what he calls our "choice" of ideas. It could be argued that the life Lukacs misses has continued, but in channels other than the ones the author prefers; new pens for the emerging story of mankind have been created. This slim requiem is full of reminiscences of a lost world which will likely ring hollow to many American ears.

May 1, 2011

Of the 36 books Lukacs (The Legacy of the Second World War) has written, this is his sixth on the conduct of his chosen profession. In his late eighties, he is not sanguine about current trends. He opposes current faculty hiring practices (the "perpetuation of mediocrity"); is skeptical of fads like psychohistory and "quanto-history"; multiculturalism, though worthy in the abstract, can lead "not to a deepening but a shallowing of [the historian's] craft." What, he asks, is the future of research with computers? Will young people continue to read, much less read critically? What is the longtime effect of diluting the teaching of high school history? Lukacs has long been a self-proclaimed "reactionary" in a field increasingly driven, in his view, by methodological fads and liberalism. Resolutely old-fashioned, he views history as art, not science, and champions the consideration of ideas over strictly material causes. Some of his fears are real, some seem less so, but Lukacs's views deserve hearing as the reflections of a lifelong professional in the elusive discipline of history. VERDICT Practicing historians and some history buffs will want to read this book.--David Keymer, Modesto, CA

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